Government monitoring revenue collection, expenditure to reduce fiscal deficit: Senate told

Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid informed the Senate that government is monitoring revenue collection and expenditure on monthly basis in order to reduce fiscal deficit, which will help to reduce loans.

In the question hour, he said, the government is taking various steps to reduce borrowings.

Sharing the measures taken by the government, he said, government borrowing for budgetary support from Scheduled Banks is being shifted from short-term to long-term, which will result in less reliance on SBP borrowing.

Privatization of various Public Sector Enterprises is under process and ninety percent of revenue collected through privatization would be used for debt retirement.

Taking the advantage of the low inflation and low interest rate, he said, the government has pursued the policy of shifting the borrowing from SBP to Commercial Banks and resultantly during the last 3 years, cumulative borrowing from SBP is (minus) -Rs. 749 billion.

As per Federal Responsibility and Debt Limitation (FRDL) Act, 2005, he said, the government is committed to reduce Federal Fiscal deficit to 4% of GDP during the 3 years beginning from 2017-?18 and maintaining it at maximum of 3.5% of GDP.

He expressed the hope that this would slow down the pace of public debt accumulation and improve revenue balance.